Information Technology (IT) infrastructure production support comprises various operational services and technology services. The operational services may include event management, incident management, service request management, orchestration, provisioning etc. The operational services may span across various technology services. The technology services may include operating systems such as UNIX, Linux, and Windows, various Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) such as Oracle SQL server, various app servers, web servers and applications.
In general, the operational services need to be provided for each technology service. For example, the event management, the incident management needs to be provided using the technology service, such as UNIX. Typically, the operational services are offered by different tools. In order to provide interaction between two operational services, different tools may be integrated. The tools may belong to an organization using the operational services or to a contracted vendor who provides the operational services.
In a multivendor environment, different technology services and operations services are handled by different service providers. In the multivendor environment, there exist three entities. Firstly, organizations that need the services and may be outsourcing the services to another service provider. Secondly, a service vendor. Thirdly, tool vendors. The tools may be owned by the organization or the service vendor. The organizations are facing difficulties due to lack of flexibility with respect to selection of the service providers and the tool vendors in the currently prevailing scenario. For example, if the organization outsources a set of services to a service vendor and if the service vendor uses a set of tools that is integrated together, the organization may not be able to split the services between the vendors. The organizations may not be able to split the services as the tools might have been integrated with the services and splitting the services may disrupt business operations. Therefore, the organizations may get locked to the service vendor. As presented above, the tools may be owned by the organizations or the service vendors. If the tools or a tool suite is integrated, there is a lock-in with the tool vendor. There is no solution to address the difficulties faced by the organizations.